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Monday, 30 June 2014

GLC is today publishing a successful decision of the Financial Ombudsman Service where our client, a Scottish homeowner, obtained a refund of £1,500 from Santander UK plc with respect to half of the legal expenses he was charged in a mortgage repossession case.The legal backgroundThe case concerns a lender who had
raised mortgage repossession proceedings in Scotland where the borrower had got
into arrears of his mortgage but the case had to be dismissed from court as it
was incompetent standing the ruling of the UK Supreme Court in RBS v. Wilson [2010] UKSC 50. The lender
then had to re-raise proceedings in court.The legal expenses for the incompetent
case came to £3,000, and the Ombudsman has ruled that it was neither the
borrower or lender's fault the case had to be dismissed following the UK
Supreme Court decision which changed what everyone understood the law to be,
and 'it seems fair, under the
circumstances, for the cost to be shared'. In paragraph 18 (opens as PDF) of the CML's response
to the Scottish Government's consultation on the RBS v. Wilson case, the CML
estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 repossession actions were dismissed in
Scotland as incompetent, standing Wilson. Taking an average expenses figure of
£1,500, we may be looking at a figure of £7.5m due to be refunded to consumers
in Scotland based on the attached Ombudsman's decision.And there are then the cases dismissed
as incompetent following Govan Law Centre's (GLC) NRAM v. Millar and RBS v McConnell 2012 SLT (Sh Ct) 58 test cases,
in relation to a failure to comply with the Pre-Action Requirement statutory
provisions. We are not sure of the approximate
number of cases dismissed because of these cases but the number is not
insignificant. Again, applying the rationale of the attached Ombudsman's
decision we may be looking at around £3m, producing an overall figure of in the
region of £10m of costs which consumers in Scotland may be able to have
refunded.

What does this mean for you?
If you were taken to court for mortgage repossession in the last few years and the court proceedings had to be dismissed or re-raised on competency grounds, then you may well be affected by this issue, and may entitled to a refund of at least 50% of the legal expenses in one of those cases. You can speak to your solicitor or advisor to check whether you may be able to claim.

If you already think you are affected by this issue then you can write to lender asking for a refund yourself - here is an illustrative letter (keep a copy of this letter too for your own records and in case you need to prove you made a complaint).

* For the sake of completeness, GLC did invite the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) and its members to make arrangements for voluntary refunds, where appropriate, but this suggestion was declined by the CML who insisted that their members were entitled to recover full legal expenses even where incompetent legal proceedings had been raised and were required to be dimissed by the court.

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Additional Support Needs Caseworker (funded by the Scottish Government).

£24,738 per annum

34 hours per week

Glasgow

Contract : Fixed Term until 31 March 2017

As part of the Let’s Talk ASN national advocacy service (delivered in partnership with Kindred), you will provide advocacy and support to parents and young people with educational issues that may require to be determined by the Additional Support Needs Tribunals for Scotland. Experience in working with children and young people with additional support needs and their families and in advocacy in a Tribunal context highly desirable.